Naturalizing Free Will: Paths and Pitfalls (original) (raw)
2014, In A. Mele (ed.), Surrounding Free Will, Oxford University Press.
Investigations into the nature of free will have traditionally proceeded on largely theoretical and conceptual grounds. But in recent years, a research program has emerged that aims to develop, refine, and evaluate theories of free will by appeal to methods and data from the natural and social sciences. We call this the Naturalizing Free Will Program (NFWP). This chapter is a critical survey of three of the main implementations of the NFWP: (i) the Phenomenological Program, which seeks to get at an accurate description of the phenomenology of free will using the methods of psychology, (ii) the Intuitionist Program, which uses the methods of social psychology to systematically investigate folk intuitions surrounding free will, and (iii) the Cognitive Psychology/Neuroscience Program, which aims to evaluate theories of free will by appeal to the results and theories of cognitive psychology and neuroscience.
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